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Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm John Favreau.
I'm John Lemmon. I'm Tommy Detour.

On today's show, we'll talk about Trump's touching eulogy for Charlie Kirk that included the president's moving declaration that he hates many of us, the news that Jimmy Kimmel's show will return to ABC despite threats from the government, and the absolutely insane announcement from Trump and RFK Jr.

about the supposed dangers of Tylenol and childhood vaccines. But let's start with what should be the biggest scandal in the country right now.

The president is firing prosecutors who refuse to arrest Americans on his enemies list for crimes that they didn't commit. Months ago, Trump picked Eric Siebert to be a U.S.
attorney in Virginia.

Siebert was ordered to investigate New York Attorney General Tish James for alleged mortgage fraud and former FBI Director James Comey for allegedly lying to Congress.

Siebert looked at all the evidence and determined that neither James nor Comey had committed any crimes. When Trump found that out, he wanted Siebert fired.
By Friday night, he was gone.

On Saturday, Trump posted a statement that was specifically addressed to his attorney general, in which he admitted that Siebert, who he called a, quote, woke rhino, was pushed out because he wouldn't charge James or Comey.

Quote, Pam, what about Comey, Adam Shifty Schiff, Letitia? They're all guilty as hell. We can't delay any longer.
It's killing our reputation and credibility.

They impeached me twice and indicted me five times, exclamation, over nothing. Justice must be served now.

In case there was any confusion, Trump reiterated the sentiment several times over the weekend. Are you disappointed that the U.S.

Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia has not prosecuted Letitia James? Do you intend to fire him?

Well, we're going to see what happens. I am not following it very closely.
It looks to me like she's very guilty of something. I said pull it because he can't be any good.
So

you want him fired. you want him out yeah I want him out yeah in regards to Pam Bondi who should she focus on as far as bringing accountability

everybody really it's a big office she's doing a good job but focus on everybody there are a lot of crooked people that were here before me

in the normal world that we once lived in uh I think this would clearly be an impeachable offense I'm not surprised by the um the scheme itself it's still shocking how Trump is just publicly stating that he wants people he doesn't like charged with crimes they didn't commit, just very open about it.

But what was your reaction to this insanity, Tommy? I mean, we're all old enough to remember that normal world. It was 2006.
The Bush administration fired eight U.S. attorneys.

They claimed it was for performance reasons. We later learned it was because the White House wanted them gone because they weren't vigorously investigating voter fraud cases against Democrats.

And I think they were too vigorously investigating other Republicans. And it grew to be such a big scandal that Alberto Gonzalez, the attorney general at the time, had to to resign.

And it was a huge stand on the Bush administration. And

this is so much worse than that because

this is Trump telling every U.S. attorney, every prosecutor, every DOJ employee that if they don't find ways to prosecute his enemies, he will fire all of them.

Again, as you note, these are absurd charges.

These date back to 2016 and Comey, you know, what they're trying to say is that Comey made false statements to Congress in 2020 about Russian interference in the 2016 election and like whether or not the Steele dossier should have been a part of it or some stupid bullshit.

And like it's just pure Trump grievance. This is him just ticking through the enemy's list and using the power of the government to get revenge on all of the people he hates.

Yeah, look,

they charged me five times. They impeached me.
He's describing a whole

constellation of unrelated human beings, government levels, institutions.

He's not describing any particular crimes even related to that, right? He wants them going after after Tish James for unrelated reasons. That's why they're going after Lisa Cook.

Adam Schiff has been accused of a whole sundry list of crimes.

And it was interesting that even Todd Blanche, who's Trump's former attorney, now deputy attorney general, apparently tried to persuade Trump to not go through with this in part because apparently Siebert has been cooperative on a number of

immigration issues, right? Like

he's not a Trump stooge, apparently.

Well, he's not so far willing to go so far as to just drum up fake charges against Adam Schiff, but he's not somebody who's like some lefty deep inside the government.

But even Blanche was overruled in part because Trump feels like in the first term, he did what the

he occasionally bent to people telling him not to do things like firing U.S. attorneys.

And he feels like after he was investigated, and so therefore he holds the whole idea of independence as being dangerous to him because he constantly commits prosecutable offenses.

Yeah, and this isn't the first time this has happened. I mean, remember the guy who originally admitted that the government made a mistake in deporting Kilmar Obrego-Garcia? He was out.

There was the U.S. attorney in Tennessee who wouldn't bring the fake case against Kilmar Obrego-Garcia, the charge that they drummed up.
He's gone.

Danielle Sassoon in New York, who was prosecuting Eric Adams and refused to drop that case because they wanted to do a quid pro quo with Eric Adams. So this is like happening all over the place.

It's also interesting you mentioned Todd Blanche didn't want it to happen. The people who are pushing it the hardest, Bill Pulte, who is the, you know, the mortgage fraud king.
Yeah.

The obvious person to the obvious person. COJ with the yeah, so he's running around.

He's trying to get all the enemies on mortgage fraud, even though like his own parents and Scott Besson and a whole bunch of other people have committed

what he's alleging that. the people who didn't actually commit it have committed.

And Ed Martin, the former January 6th attorney, who's now the fucking lunatic that couldn't even get confirmed for Janine Pirro's job. So now he's the weaponization attorney at DOJ.

So these are the two lunatics now pushing him on this. I mean, President of the United States is just out there saying, here's my political enemies.
I've decided they're guilty. Make it so.

And writing it in a tweet to the point where people are like, is this a DM? Was this supposed to be? I thought it was a mistaken DM.

It reminded me of like a washed up quarterback who just got on Twitter, who was trying to like send a woman in a city he's visiting. We're so past.

the quick note, like, hey, Jan, what are you up to this weekend heading to Zen? This is a, I'm thinking of a specific example. I remember example.

No, it's, I, I, I saw people saying that it didn't occur to me that it,

like, I just like, it's inconceivable to me that, that, that Trump DMs, but maybe he does.

But that, but also, like, he, then I thought to myself, is it possible that even in his private correspondence, he refers to him as shifty-shift?

Like, that we don't actually know where the performance ends. That's a good chance.
But, but I didn't take it to me. I didn't think it was a mistake.
He was, he was, he's so, there's such a there.

Look, he is doing, he is cocky. He is performing this kind of bluster.
Like he's like, nobody will object, nobody will stop him. And he hopes that by asserting it, it becomes true.

And he does like benefit from the fact that like this is a Watergate. in a public post.

It used to, it should have taken journalists a whole Robert Redford film worth of investigation into figuring out that the president was willing to say this behind the scenes.

He does so in public and he benefits from it because he does it in the open. And if you read the tweet, he says, I've reviewed 30 statements and posts saying like same old thing.

So it seems like he just read it. He just raged.
I love that. He read a bunch of angry tweets.
He's scrolling all day. Everyone's like, guilty as hell.
Amazing.

Of course, Republicans in Congress are just up in arms about this, right?

Mark Wayne Mullen was interviewed over the weekend on the Sunday shows and was asked, like, what about the president just announcing that he's going after his enemies and he's firing people until he gets an indictment?

He goes, well, President Trump is very open and transparent with the American people, and he speaks his mind. That's what his supporters love about him.

That's where we are.

He's saying it out in the open, so that's okay.

This is what people wanted. Well, that's the whole story of the Trump administration 2.0, frankly, is it's all happened in the open.
It's all happening in the open.

But it's like, also, you know, I know that Trump, remember the line,

my success will be my vengeance. That will be my best revenge.
And I don't want to go after people even though I could, and all that bullshit. Yes.

And they did that right because they did view this as a liability. And

they pretend they don't have liabilities, but they do.

And, you know, he went out to the cameras to try to clean this up a little bit and say, like, well, you know, say, you know, I think that whatever I think is what the DOJ thinks, right?

So he's like trying to get out there and have it both ways. Siebert

has been replaced, at least temporarily, with Lindsay Halligan, another one of Trump's former defense attorneys, turned White House staffers, who has absolutely zero experience as a prosecutor, has never been a prosecutor.

And she got the job. The Times also reports that the White House is now focused on the U.S.
attorney in Maryland, Kelly Hayes,

who did agree to the warrant for the FBI raid of John Bolton's house, but isn't so sure there's enough evidence to bring a case against Adam Schiff.

One of the prosecutors who worked for Siebert said to the Washington Post, quote, in terms of what Trump wants, the end result is going to be the same.

If you don't have the evidence, you don't have the prosecutors, and you don't have the grand jury all on the same page, it doesn't matter who's in the office.

Does that give either of you any comfort that maybe there are limits to what Trump can do here? Or still pretty awful. None whatsoever.
No comfort here.

I mean, these investigations, they can bankrupt you, they can last for years, they can intrude into all parts of your private life and lead to the release of information or personal correspondence that could embarrass you.

It can harm your family, it can harm your business associates. Like, it's just like the best case is an endless political investigation.

And there's a worst version that we don't really talk about because it seems kind of paranoid. It seems like something Donald Trump would say.

But that's a version where a government official distorts some evidence or plants some evidence on you to please Mr. Trump.
And I don't think we can rule that out.

It's also like, it's just worth noting that Adam Schiff was elected to provide oversight to the Trump administration, specifically the FBI.

I mean, we just saw Cash Patel screaming at him at a hearing.

And now in the back of his mind, he and his staff are all worried that them doing the jobs that Schiff was elected to do could put them even further on the crosshairs.

Like, this is a bad, bad situation. Yeah, like, I want to believe that these are protections.
And I think in some ways, they are. Like, we've seen this over and over again.

Like, you know, lawyers who make all kinds of outlandish claims in the public square in front of a judge are afraid to do so because they know that there are licenses on the line and

there's a standard they're still held to in a courtroom. Also, the Venn diagram of people willing to do Trump's bidding to such a degree and people that are capable, effective, smart, able to

like be an effective prosecutor,

there's probably not as much overlap in there as Trump would want. That's a good thing, right? Like there's a reason Cash Patel is both a kind of flunky for Trump and also incompetent, right?

There's like these, these are groups that have overlap, more so than the hypercompetent. They have some of those too.
But the part that's really scary to me is

there's a reason that we don't,

that political prosecutions are so dangerous. And it's because we understand that like everybody's a person.
People make mistakes. And

if you draw the, like if you put the like the evil eye of law enforcement on someone just because you don't like their politics, just because they've come after you, just because you're an enemy, they may find something.

And we all understand that

justice is imperfect and that not every crime everywhere will be found and that we rely on some kind of

even-handedness in it because we understand that once an investigation begins, you have no idea. where it's going to leave.
Like, who knows?

Yes, everybody's, all these people are apparently declaring.

And by the way, not so far the people they've claimed, but like regardless, I'm sure there's lots of people out there that have claimed a second home as their primary residence.

Maybe they should be found out for that, but not just because they happen to be on the wrong side of Donald Trump.

Yeah, I think it's tempting to say, okay, well, if some prosecutor figures out a way to get an indictment in a Maryland or a Virginia, then maybe the grand or, you know, maybe they'll get a grand jury like they have in D.C.

that refuses to indict, right? Or then if the jury does indict, then you get to a judge and none of these judges in D.C. or Maryland or Virginia are actually going to take this case.

They're going to laugh it out of the courtroom. And like that could be true in a lot of cases, but take the long view of where this is going, right?

They're already, you know, in the New York Times lawsuit that just got thrown out, you know, they shopped for the forum, right?

They did some forum shopping and found a judge and they were hoping to get Eileen Cannon in Tampa, I'm sure, or one of an Eileen Cannon type judge in Florida.

So at some point, they can find a grand jury in a red area of the country with a judge who's

not a first-term Trump judge, but maybe a second-term Trump judge and a really bad prosecutor.

And as fanciful as Tommy's fear about planting evidence may sound, like, I don't know, are we that far away? It's happened, right? Like,

what's, you know, once you get enough Trump stooges and enough federal judgeships and enough prosecutors, like, this starts becoming more real.

And just because you dodge a bunch of political prosecutions now doesn't mean that we can do that down the road. Yeah, and you fight all this out in Alina Haba's masterclass.

I don't know.

I like to me, this is another, and I know you're talking to Warren about this and we're not, but like, this is another thing where I saw over the weekend, you know, Chuck Schumer's like asking for a meeting with Donald Trump to negotiate government shutdown.

And then this happens and he's like, this is the path to dictatorship. It's like, good, okay, I get that.
And then, and then on the other hand, it's time for a meeting with Donald Trump.

It's just like, if there's a, if there's not a good reason as any to not fund this kind of government that's doing this, I don't know. It's crazy.

We don't have to get into it, but I'm just like, I don't know what else to be done about this. This is a, it's an impeachable offense.

It's obviously not going to be looked at in Congress because Republicans control Congress.

I guess it's another reason to make sure that we win the fucking midterms because if Republicans can keep controlling Congress, they're going to appoint more of these judges.

God forbid, they get rid of the filibuster and start actually coming up with laws that some of these prosecutors and juries are going to be like, oh, they did break that law, that crazy law that they just passed.

Really, it's a good reason to go out and work hard to win the midterms. The other side of the coin here is that Trump's abusing his power not just to punish his enemies, but to help his friends.

We also learned this weekend that Tom Homan, Trump's borders are, was recorded a year ago, accepting a $50,000 bribe from FBI agents posing as businessmen who were seeking border security contracts.

Homan was a private citizen at the time, but he'd served as Trump's acting director of ICE during the first term and had every reason to believe he would be in a position of power during a second term.

MSNBC reported that, quote, several FBI and justice officials believed that they had a strong criminal case against Homan for conspiracy to commit bribery, according to four people familiar with the probe.

But of course, once Trump won the election, took office, appointed Homan as Borders are, the DOJ mysteriously dropped the case.

So, you know, as the saying goes, for my friends, everything, for my enemies, the law, I guess Republicans are cool with public officials taking bribes so long as they do a good job locking up immigrants without due process.

That's how that works. Yeah, there's one part of the story that was strange, which is so this happens,

and then they said they wanted to wait to see if he gets a job in the administration and pursues it further.

And I just want to understand what was happening in those weeks before Trump takes office, after you have him taking 50 grand in a fucking kava bag.

But then you're just going to wait and see where it goes.

And I just like, well, here's where we are, right?

They take office and they apparently shut down the investigation. But like, I do feel like there's some like very important context that we don't yet have.

It just sounds like the deal was if you take the cash, you have to deliver on the quo. You have the quid, but you got to do the quo.
You got to deliver the contracts.

And that's what they were waiting on, according to all the reporting. Right.
No, well, right. But he took the

$50,000 in a bag.

Like, I don't, like, if he can't deliver on the bribe, he still took the bribe, right? You can't give somebody. You know, I think that's what they said.
That's sort of like a bad thing.

I know, I know that's what they're saying. Are they going to go find him?

My takeaways were, first of all, lock him up for eating Kava. That is just like the most mid fucking food.
Also, no one has ever looked like a more, like a corrupt New York cop more than Tom Homan.

I mean, you know what I mean?

You look like he's going to pull you over and smash your taillight and then like give you a ticket for it or like kick down your bodega door and rifle through your cash register.

He just like looked, it's also like the,

it's just like, it was such an old school corruption scandal too, you know, like an MSM mainstream media scoop FBI sting. I don't know.

As classic a story as you get,

if you give me this cash, I'll do your bidding for a government contract.

Like that is, that is like, that's the classic that's that's the remember the remember uh what's his name jefferson who had the money in the freezer yeah whenever there's like a brick of cash in an interesting place there is

gold bars yeah gold bars like this is classic stuff yeah this is classic stuff and now they they the white house has sort of outright denied it and yet apparently there's video of it so would love to see that video and love to under the ex

love to see the video and then come to understand the explanation for the Kava bag of cash.

Yeah, the last paragraph of the MSNBC story sort of cleared up because I'm like, oh, so he wasn't a public official at the time. So what'd you have to do?

They asked legal experts about a hypothetical situation similar to the Hohmann probe.

They said a person who promises to influence federal contracts when they become a public official can't be charged under the federal bribery statutes until they are named or appointed.

But they could be, like, there was a possible conspiracy charge that they could do. So they were just weighing them.

I'm sure that whoever, before Trump took office, they're just like, this is not a strong enough case to go. It's a Merrick Garland shit right there.

Oh, because it's still a crime, however, for anyone to seek money to improperly influence influence federal contracts, whether they're a public official or not. That's what I was looking for.

I'm sorry.

You're telling me you have

a former Trump official, someone who's about to enter the administration on the ground.

No, because it was September of 24th, so we don't know. But right.
Well, right, but then he's elected, then Trump is elected. I mean, like, there's months before Trump takes office, right?

I don't remember exactly when home and found out he was going to be appointed, but he was right when he took the fucking bribe to suggest he'd have a good shot at being in power. He nailed that one.

It must have been after that VP debate. Right.
Yeah, sure.

Yeah.

Once everyone, look, everyone knows that Tim Waltz nodding was the thing that fucking clinched. You know what? Actually, no, it was the morning of the view.
Oh, yeah.

Not enough daylight. Not enough daylight.
Homan's back, baby. Give me the cash.
But so,

what I'm trying to wrap my around is like, okay, great. You want to build a good case.
You're just watching this guy go from private citizen to public official.

You have it on tape that he took 50 grand. You're not making that information available to the public.

Like, what's the, like, I'm just, and again, I say this, like, I'm genuinely, I'm not like, I don't know. I want the answer.

I want to understand why, why this was allowed to go all the way to the point at which Donald Trump is now in charge of this agency. Yeah, and it is like, I was like half kidding.

It is shocking and old school because it's like cash in a, I assume, brown paper bag because it's shitty ass kava.

But like, you know, then you read the New York Times and the report is like, clearly the Trump administration cut a quid pro quo with United Arab Emirates, where the UAE bought $2 billion worth of Trump family crypto.

And in exchange, we give them advanced AI chips. Yeah, it's like 50 grand, you fucking fat.

You call that money? That's nothing.

Can you just talk about like the,

again, this is sort of like Trump being out in the open about wanting to prosecute enemies, the reaction to this from Republican MAGA World? Can we

Megan Kelly, who is purportedly a lawyer and purportedly a journalist, her first reaction to the news? We do not care. Don't bother Tom Homan.
He's a national treasure.

We're just fully tribal. I just thought that was a crazy response.

And at some point in one of her long missives about this, she she said, oh, there's like no credible evidence according to, I guess, Trump's own now law enforcement.

So she used that as to justify why she said, we don't care. I also like,

who is the we you're speaking for? We, you're a lot of we's. This, I mean, this, we're talking about the Kirk Memorial Service, too, but everything in the last two weeks has become they.

A lot of they's and they's and us.

They're and we. Can I read you something from an insufferable woke lib who wrote about this they issue? No, Charlie Kirk wasn't killed by them.
They didn't pull the trigger. One person did.

Apparently young men driven by impulse and a terrible hate. If they were involved, law enforcement would find them and the justice system would hold them accountable.
Carl Rofe.

I mean, it happened when, you know, Tim Miller like responded to Megan Kelly's crazy thing about like, we don't care. And

she wrote back to him, we don't trust you. We don't trust the work of your president's DOJ.
One of yours killed Charlie and then you laughed at our pain. And then it went on and on and on forever.

But it's just like, really just dangerous. It's it

like brain rot. Again, like you look at like the poll like brain rot is the enemy of the Republic.
It comes for all of us. It comes for people that that that that that are uh uh like in politics.

It comes for politicians big big famous media personalities like brain rot uh it does not care what it doesn't care how much how much money you have, how much power you've had, how much how much you've how much power you've gained in politics.

And it's like really it's like really disturbing. Can I just say for my money, the best corruption scandal narrative has been Tiffany Trump's father-in-law.

What's his name, Masud Bolas or something over there? So there's a story about him just making up that he's a billionaire, apparently.

And then there was the one over the other day where Tiffany Trump and her husband were on a mega yacht owned by a foreign billionaire oil trader. It's just a great little subplot.

I just, the Holman thing gets me so

it's it's just brazen. Especially like how they're treating people that are detained in in this country, detaining U.S.

citizens, detaining legal residents, shipping them off to horrific fucking detention centers, inhumane conditions. And then this guy's like, $50,000.
Great. I'll take it.
Release the home and files.

A $50,000 to do a contract that was probably like build an ICE detention center that is just essentially dog cages. We should say that there is audio tape of this.

There is security cameras that saw this, according to the story. So

it's going to be a hard one to cover up because someone somewhere we had footage of Jeffrey Epstein getting offed.

At least we're going to find out that

the Kava's second angle was set down and the person behind the register had fallen asleep. And there's no mysterious Holman-like shape moving with a fib brick of cash.

It should be one that Congress should be able to subpoena, especially if Democrats

get the House papers.

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So Trump took his all-consuming obsession with revenge to a funeral over the weekend.

When he spoke at Charlie Kirk's memorial service in Phoenix, about 90,000 people were in attendance, including Trump's cabinet, tons of Republican-electeds, right-wing media stars, Elon Musk,

who was seen chatting with Trump for the first time since the breakup.

The service had the feel of an evangelical megachurch at times, with speakers like J.D. Vance calling Kirk, quote, a martyr for the Christian faith.

Kirk's widow, Erica, who will now run Turning Point USA, gave a speech where she actually forgave her husband's killer and said that the answer to hate is not hate.

A message that didn't really land with the event's headliner, Donald Trump. Let's listen to those two clips.
My husband, Charlie,

he wanted to save

young men

just like the one who took his life.

That young man.

I forgive him.

He did not hate his opponents. He wanted

The best for them. That's where I disagreed with Charlie.

I hate my opponent.

and i don't want the best for them i'm sorry i am sorry erica

lovely just lovely

it kind of landed like a joke in the room but it's not funny anyway yeah i think he was trying to be glib and funny in the moment saying i'm not like him i'm a worse person context cues sorry but he does but then sort of like what's then it's like well but don't you it's weird to run into your ex at a memorial service you know it's one of the yeah but that's why you're looking forward a good place to be cordial it's where you're cordial you know

there are jokes that aren't really jokes Yeah, that joke that was.

All of his jokes aren't really jokes. That's what I'm saying.
It's like Al Franken used to call it. I'm a little past the Mentitas of Joke stuff with him anymore.
Well, Al Franken had this term.

It was called kidding on the square. He tried to get that to take off.
That's what that is, kidding on the square. Yeah, it's also like...
It's a joke, but he means it.

We had an assassination. The country is like on the brink, and the president of the United States goes to the memorial service and is like, I hate my opponents.
It's pretty.

Yeah, no, I don't disagree at all. I'm just saying how it landed in the room.
They all laughed at it, which was like kind of a surprising reaction to me.

I bet it was kind of the nervous titter.

What did he say?

Like, what is happening?

What did you guys make of the event? I watched a bunch of it today. It was really two parts.
It was part like genuine religious service, like megachurch, band, praise music, et cetera.

And then there was this whole

Trump rally, basically. And the Erica Kirk speech was entirely about the personal, their marriage, Charlie's faith.

That was was a genuinely powerful moment, like forgiving her husband's killer, just as it was in the

Emmanuel AME church shooting in 2015 when the families of the victims forgave the murderer.

But again, I counted nine Trump family staff or cabinet speakers. So we had Sergio Gore, real headliner, Stephen Miller, Tulsi Gabbard, Marco Rubio, Hegzeth, RFK, Don Jr., J.D.
Vance, Trump.

Then there were like media people like Tucker Carlson. There were placards like you'd see at an RNC.
There was giant like sparkler firework type things. There was TPOSA branding everywhere.

And like, I'm a wasp from New England, as you guys know. So I find that kind of melding of religion and politics very uncomfortable, but it didn't seem to bother anybody in that room.

And I know it's kind of standard in Republican politics at this point. So it's just, it was an odd event.
I mean, one

interesting takeaway just from watching it is

a lot of the speakers, like the overtly political messaging was almost secondary.

The hard emphasis was on like, get married, have a family, follow Christ. It was more like existential stuff, speaking to meaning and purpose.

And I just, I'm not saying we should make those arguments specifically, but it was kind of notable

that

there's all these young people who feel like disconnected and disaffected and the void in their life and a lack of purpose. And they were speaking to that first.

And we do need to find a way to co-op some of that.

Because I do think like Charlie Kirk was very good at talking about populist economic stuff, but I haven't heard a lot of Democrats, maybe James Telrico is one of them, talking about kind of like the void people are feeling and young people, young men men in particular.

Yeah, I had the same, I had the same note.

First of all,

Erica Kirk's speech, as just a speech, I thought was just excellent.

It was, I think, very well written. She had a point she wanted to make.

And you can take issue with how she describes her

deceased husband's politics, but as just

as a way of conveying a story she was trying to tell, i thought it was like beautifully done and the part that does jump out is that part and i was thinking about in watching this sort of like kind of revival like event where so many people had turned out and you know van says oh he was martyred for the christian faith i don't know about that um but these people are turning out because charlie kirk was martyred if he was killed for his views by this person uh who uh was radicalized against him and we need to get more details but but he was martyred and it did bring a lot of people out and it does give people the opportunity to tell the story they want to tell about him.

That's what happens. That's part of what political violence can do.

But in watching it, you see that like, you know, what is right-wing politics offering right now, this version of it? And it is, yes, this is the Trump piece of it, like revenge on your enemies.

And yes, it's like it's order, right?

Promising you in an uncertain, dangerous world that there can be control and there can be safety and that feeling of uncertainty you have, like there's an answer and we're the answer.

But there is the third part of it, which is meaning, which is like

we will help tell a story, not just of the country, but of you and where you fit into

this time if you don't feel like your life has that connection.

And, you know, so many decades of message testing and consulting driven language on the left has drained so much of the like moral language out of democratic politics, which is another way of saying we have drained the meaning out of democratic politics.

And

I had the same reaction as you to watching this, which is, yes, like it's not that we have to have our version of this idea about like have a family, whatever.

Like we don't need to figure out like the exactly religious. Right.
Or overtly religious. But like there is, we have taken morality out of a lot of our political language.

You know, we, and, and I do think it leaves us in moments, especially like this,

especially on the left, there's a sort of kind of like tinniness to how we respond to things.

And I do think that in some ways flows from the fact that like we don't have an answer for this third piece of it. Yeah.

There's a, there's a moral language, even to politics, even if you're not religious, that I think we cede

by like saying, okay, religion is a thing for the right. And I think, you know, you mentioned Tellarico.

I also think, I mean, Pope Francis did this, Pope Leo is doing this to some extent as well, particularly around issues of poverty, war, immigration, social justice.

And

I do think that is, you know, it has been somewhat mocked, I think, for a while

in parts of the left. And this isn't like, if you're not religious, you're not religious, that's fine.
There's big room for secular people in this country, too.

And religiosity is declining and has declined over the last several decades for plenty of reasons that are the fault of organized religions themselves.

Yeah, but then people, you know, walk around with crystals in their pockets. So they're looking for it somewhere.
They are looking for it. Yeah, right.
Absolutely.

Or they're like, you know, they're trying to buy labo boos or whatever.

You know, everyone's. There's a lot to put on a labooboo.
Everyone's got their own kind of religion. But I do think, you know, it was interesting hearing Erica Kirk talk, like, forgive the killer.

I was like, now that is a truly Christian sentiment because there's a lot of sentiments purported to be Christian that we hear from a lot of the folks on the right.

And then I think, I think it does a disservice to Christianity by being like, because then people who aren't religious are like, if that's Christianity, fuck that. I don't want that.
You know?

And I think that's why it's so important for folks on the left who are religious, if you happen to be. And again, if you're not, no big deal.

But if you happen to be, then like, talk about what those morals are to you. Right.
And talk about what religion means to you.

Talk about how it means caring for the stranger and the immigrant and your neighbor and all that kind of stuff. So I totally, I noticed that too.
Yeah.

I mean, look, 100,000 people were in that room or whatever the total number was because they were looking for something deeper than just, you know, policy white papers and for meaning beyond politics.

I mean, I think being part of MAGA for them makes them feel like you're part of something greater than yourself. And then there's the religious piece.

But yeah, they're not all in there for public-private partnerships or, you know, whatever. Well, otherwise, you also, if you leave it to them, you get the,

and you get this left and the right, like you get the worst of the Old Testament, which is just like fire and brimstone and war. And it's like,

it's not New Testament Jesus at all, you know? Stephen Miller's speech.

The day that Charlie died, the angels wept, but those tears have been turned into fire in our hearts, and that fire burns with a righteous fury that our enemies cannot comprehend or understand.

I wrote down that sentence too because the metaphor makes no sense. What are you doing? Why are the tears burning? Okay, you like it when Adele said she turned fire into the rain or whatever?

Well, he can't sing like Adele. That's true.
You also, again, we are all old enough to remember when Paul Wellstone died. For those who don't know, he's just

an unbelievable, heroic U.S. senator from Minnesota who died tragically in a...
plane accident right before the election in 2002, I think. Accident, so they got to Tommy too.
Oh, my God.

And

there was a big memorial service for him that included one of his his friends, a former staffer, who said lines like, we are begging you to help us win this Senate election for Paul Wellstone.

And that was treated by Republicans who attended and the political press like it was an outrageous, out-of-bounds, unforgivable breach of decorum or something. Truly insane.

It was an insane overreaction at the time. It was.
And then you look at something like this.

Although I saw some people getting mad that they were signing up people and organizing it at Kirk's Memorial Service. They would have wanted.

Yeah.

Someone offs me, please sign people up.

Send people up. Let's raise some money for the fucking Senate fund or whatever.
And we'll go dark for like a week. That's all.
That's all. Best of.
Let's do a clip show. Just

clip show. I just want you, just

to help me out and just look through my mentions online. Just

fight with my enemies. Fight with my online enemies.
Honestly, like, genuinely too soon.

Let's keep going.

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We did get some good news on Monday. How about that? Disney says Jimmy Kimmel is returning to the air on Tuesday evening.

In a statement, the company said they had merely paused Kimmel to, quote, avoid,

here's a statement that I'm sure was poured over by a lot of lawyers and workshops and a few different drafts, to quote, avoid further inflaming a tense situation at an emotional moment for our country.

And that, quote, after thoughtful conversations with Jimmy, they're ready for the show to return.

Just before the announcement, FCC chair Brendan Carr said during an event in New York that Kimmel had been suspended due to, quote, ratings, not because of anything that's happened at the federal government level, which, of course, is only true if you pretend he never said to Disney, quote, we can do this the easy way or the hard way, and that if they didn't censor Kimmel, quote, there's going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.

Carr's threats got quite a bit of pushback, even from Republicans, even from Trump supporters and officials.

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard used her appearance at the Kirk Memorial to call for the protection of free speech, joining the likes of Ted Cruz and a few members of the right-leaning manosphere.

Here's Gabbard followed by Cruz. I may not agree with what you say, but I will fight to defend to the death with my very life

your right to speak.

Free speech is the foundation of our democratic republic. We must protect it at all costs because without it, we'll be lost.

Look, look, I like Brandon Carr. He's a good guy.
He's the chairman of the FCC. I work closely with him.
But what he said there is dangerous as hell. He says,

we can do this the easy way, but we can do this the hard way. Oh, no.
And I got to say, that's right out of Goodfellas.

That's right out of a mafiosa coming into a bargain. It gets worse.
It gets worse.

It'd be a shame if something happened to it. What? Jesus Christ.
What?

What accidents say something?

I want to play the last part of that.

Nice ba, you have here.

Hey.

Nice ba, you have here. What was that accent? Can we, Austin? Yeah, let's do it one more time.

That's right out of a mafioso coming into a bar going, nice ba you have Tia. It'd be a shame if something happened to it.
Nice ba you have here? It's like a, it's like a bar.

There's like a Boston accent in the movie somewhere. It really reminds me of when

Christopher Guest is doing a British accent and waiting for Guffman. I'll R-U.

Because you drop, because you drop.

You dropped the H? I'll R-U.

Shout out, Ted. I mean, yeah, make sure you're saying the right thing.
I know. You're right.
I know.

Hey, Ted. Good job, Ted Chris.

Good job, Ted Chris. You know what? That was our bias.
That's us. That's us having a gut reaction to you.

Expect, and we made fun of you doing the right thing. You know what? We will defend your right to do that terrible fucking action.
To be that lamb. No matter how.
You can do it everywhere.

We will defend your right to say that. Even if the Knights of Columbus come after you for it.

The Knights of Columbus. Columbus.

You know?

So we're recording this sort of right after the news that he's coming back. So by the time you're hearing it, maybe we'll have more reporting of what actually happened.

But before we get that reporting, what do you think happened?

What's your guess? So first of all, there was a bunch of people at the memorial that talked about free speech. Even Trump talked about it.

And Erica Kirk talked about it.

And it's funny that just because this event happened in the wake of Brendan Carr saying what he said and the kind of the government jawboning major companies into canceling specific shows, like it seems like a rebuke.

I don't know that she meant it as a rebuke necessarily, but the Ted Cruz part of it and a few others were pretty clear.

I don't think we know yet.

There have been some people talking about this. I think it was his name, G.
Elliott Morris was making this point.

That searches for cancel Disney Plus went through the roof. And that, like,

everyone overestimates Trump's popularity, his ability to persuade people, especially the corporations and other entities that have kind of bent to him.

And my hope is this is in part a response to the scale of the reaction, which maybe they didn't expect. And that's both public-facing, but also like

I do think internal politics still matters. And I don't know what happened inside of Disney, but this is a big company for a lot of people that

are

liberal, that didn't get that, that like maybe don't bring their politics to work every day, but don't want to feel like they're part of a government crackdown on free speech and by the way these are companies that need to make things with a lot of talented people uh that are not going to feel excited about working with disney uh if disney is willing to go along uh with the trump administration if they if they bring the hammer down like this so so i think we'll we'll we'll find out more and i i don't want to like overstate the importance of them restoring Jimmy Kimmel because Brandon Carr said what he said.

And my fear is the only lesson he'll draw from it is that he can't say it in public.

But I do think it tells us that Donald Trump is not as powerful as he would like us to believe.

Trump would have to lock me up to get Hannah to cancel Disney ⁇ . I'll tell you that much.
I know. I started going, I'm like, oh, bluey.

If we're not lapping Moana or frozen in my house again, like shit's going down. It would have been tough.
I guess you guys don't care about democracy. That's right.
Correct.

I mean, I bet like ABC Brass and Bob Iger are getting a lot of calls from. talented people they work with being like, hey, this is really bad.

And I guess my question is, do we think this is going to lead people to think, all right, everybody, keep your head down. Like, just everyone chill out a little bit for a little while.

We can get through this. Or are people going to feel emboldened and think, maybe it's time to fight, we could win around? I suspect like the corporations will say, keep your head down.

Some of the artists will want to fight a little more and stand up for things. I guess we'll find out.

I hope people stand up. I hope people are not.
I hope people are emboldened. I mean, there's, I have a couple of questions about.

So one option is that.

Iger made the move thinking that it wouldn't get the blowback that it did, not just from the public, but from all the people he knows in Hollywood and many of his friends.

Well, then I'm saying then the blowback happened and then he was like, okay, I'm going to back off.

Then there's another scenario where from the beginning, Iger wanted to bring him back on the air, but you also have now all the affiliates owned by Nexstar and all the affiliates owned by Sinclair saying that they're not going to air the show.

I don't know what it looks like.

to have that to have Jimmy Kimmel on the air nationally, but then have most of the ABC affiliates across the country, or at least a pretty good portion of them, not air it.

And I don't know what that means financially. I don't know what that means.

So I'm kind of interested in, like, it could have been, too, that they were trying to figure out how to get all the affiliates back on board. But again,

speculation. Right.
And I do think that, like,

given that it was short, if what the decision was is we're the affiliates are going along with what Brendan Carr is saying here, and some of them are conservative themselves.

If we, like, there's a, we haven't heard from Jimmy Kimmel. He hasn't said a word, right? Like I do feel like there's a little bit of,

if it does get back on, this is conversations behind the scene. That's about like solving the problem quickly when you're not just dealing with Brendan Carr, but you're dealing with the affiliate.

So yeah, like I think that's totally possible. Yeah.

Speaking of Jimmy talking about this, what do you guys think the monologue should be?

Just a series of jokes about how Brendan Carr looks like he's aged 75 years in the job, maybe something like that. It is funny.

I was going to suggest just like a lot of Brendan Carr specific jokes, right? Like you say something about the Charlie Kirk stuff very quickly.

Move off that.

But like really going on Brendan Carr, probably Trump too.

Yeah,

kind of have to. You have to.
You have to. Yeah, I mean, I guess the question is like what, what we don't know.

Like all we've had is like characterizations of what Kimmel was going to say on Wednesday.

And now we have some, this statement that says, oh, they've kind of reached a kind of, whatever, they've had a good conversation about it and it'll appear on the show.

So we just don't know, but I assume. You think he does the Ted Cruz accent?

Yeah. I am a walking here.

I mean, do you like they've sort of famously had a rivalry, right? Then they played one-on-one basketball. Ted Cruz actually beat Jimmy in one-on-one basketball.

So they have this relationship, and you figure he's going to have to reference this in some way. I mean, Ted Cruz actually did stand up for him when no one else did.
Yeah. It's not nothing.

It's not nothing. We made fun of the accent, but that was the wrong thing to focus on.
Shame on us. Shame on us.

What the banana?

Do you think that the reaction from Cruz and others on the right means that there is like a there's a real viable opposition to

like limits on free speech that Trump's not going to go beyond?

Or is this just a lucky happenstance? Because you could argue that had Brendan Carr not been so fucking stupid to make the threat

on a podcast, then they could have done it quietly and we would have never have known.

I think that the Trump administration touched the stove on free speech a couple of times in the last week in ways that were meaningful.

The worst of the two was Pam Bondi talking about criminalizing hate speech because that got people like Tucker Carlson and Megan Kelly to be like, whoa, whoa, whoa, hard red line.

Like, I support civil disobedience if this happens.

As you saw in that Megan Kelly tweet you were reading earlier, a lot of the MAGA folks pretended that Kimmel was pulled off the air because of ratings or bullshit when we all,

like, it was not, it was not a subtle comment and it was made to a TPUSA staffer named Benny Johnson, right? So like the context was all there. Again, I do respect Ted Cruz for speaking up.

I respect a lot of kind of Trump curious comedians or conservative voices for speaking up. I do think Brendan Carr made it very easy for them.

And the fact that it wasn't just Brendan Carr doing this threatening

riff on Benny Johnson's show, there was a clear merger before the FCC about all these affiliate stations that showed you the financial incentives involved here for punishing Jimmy Cammell.

Yeah, but you play it out, right? Let's say Brendan Carr doesn't do that interview and doesn't post fucking GIFs in response to Brian Stealth

and all the rest. And all that happens is there's this outcry about what Jimmy Kimmel said

that gets drummed up on the right. There's this debate that takes place online.
Then Nexstar makes this announcement. Then Sinclair makes this announcement.
And then he's pulled, right?

Like, is there the same level of First Amendment concern? Probably not.

Republicans are united in saying that this was a business decision not led by the government, even if Brendan Carr is saying different things behind the scene.

Does that mean Jimmy Kimmel comes back or not? We have no idea. We don't live in that world.

But I do think that, to me, is unfortunately going to be one of the lessons they take, which is, hey, Brendan, shut the fuck up.

Shut the fuck up. Got to start being a little quieter.
Well, ironically. We're all knocking Brendan Carr here, but Trump, too, is like, yeah, we got one.
Another scalp. NBC, you're next.
That's right.

That is true. That's important, too.
That is true. Yeah.
But there would be this, then, like, imagine like two weeks from now, right? This all plays out.

And then two weeks from now, we get a note that you get a reported story in the Times that like Brendan Carr actually called the, you know, like all the stuff that's playing out behind the scenes.

And it's another kind of nobody, why doesn't anybody care about that?

You know, like you just see they could do this in a smarter way and it'd be more effective at curtailing speech, which makes me really. Yeah, it is true.

Like you can have idiots like Brendan Carr and Pam Bondi, but like no matter how buttoned up the administration is, you're always going to have Trump just admitting the thing. We got him.

You know, which is, which is... I was just thinking, this is why J.D.
Vance is also very dangerous as anomity, because J.D. Vance goes out there and he's like,

there's just bad ratings and he wasn't funny, you know? And that's all. And then he just leaves it at that.

Like he's, he, this is, this is the consequence of trying to like intellectualize everything and make some kind of an argument that's not just, oh, no, no, I hate free speech for people that I don't like.

I like it for me. That's that, which is basically Trump's argument.

So, you know, he's got a war on free speech. He's also making big gains in his war on science and children's health.

Trump teased a big policy announcement on autism during Charlie Kirk's memorial service, which is, you guys, I don't know if everyone knows this, but that's what presidents often do when they go speak at memorial service.

There was a whole accomplishments section. There was an accomplishment.
Yeah, I think we got to the 20, I think we did a 2020 election riff. We did.
There was a, we solved crime in D.C.

You can go out to restaurants now. Yeah, no, this was

exactly what you do during a eulogy.

And so the announcement was on Monday. And here's the lead of the AP story about the event Trump held at the White House on this autism announcement.

Quote, Trump uses platform of presidency to promote unproven ties between Tylenol, vaccines, and autism without new evidence. That's it.
That's the story. But you really have to hear it to believe it.

So let's listen to Trump. By the way, I think I can say that there are certain groups of people that don't take vaccines and don't take any pills that have no autism.

Is that a correct statement, by the way?

There are some studies that says, yeah, with the Amish, for example. The Amish.
Yeah. Virtually, hear no I hear I heard none.

See, Bobby wants to be very careful with what he says and he should, but I'm not so careful with what I say. I think it's very bad.
They're pumping it looks like they're pumping into a horse.

You have a little child, little fragile child, and you get a a vat of eighty different vaccines, I guess. The MMR, I think, should be taken separately.
This is based on what I feel.

Ideally, a woman won't take Tylenol, but if you can't tough it out, if you can't do it,

that's what you're going to have to do. You'll take atylenol, but it'll be very sparingly.
I said,

well, let's see how we say that.

I said,

minophen,

acetaminophen. Got it.
You got it. You said okay.
Yeah, it was okay. It was okay.

This is the guy I want to take my medical advice from. Next to America's healthiest man, Robert F.
Kennedy, Jr.

Do we not remember 2020? Remember the fucking the bleach?

Remember the Iver Mecton?

Like what?

Just to, you know, I look, I don't, you know, there is autism among the Amish. It's not, it's not a, that's not true.
There's no difference in incidents.

There's just a difference in reporting because they're the Amish. And so people have looked into this and there's, yeah, it's the, they have just as much autism among the Amish as everywhere else.

Yeah, the problem is that Amish parents can't Google, hey, why does my kid like train so much?

That's we can't. Yes, we can.
Yes, we can. I just can't get past Bobby Kennedy's face looking like it was the game ball from Super Bowl III.

You know, he's just like, it's like such a specific leather. Oh, yeah.
It's just, guy kills me, man.

So it was like, don't take it, but ask your doctor, but take a lowest dose, tough it out. By the way, Tylenol is like the only

thing that pregnant women can take for pain, right? And so now you're going to tell them to tough it out if they have a fever or pain or whatever else because no studies link. That's

the large-scale studies have not found any reliable evidence that acetaminophen causes autism and medical experts consider it safe when used appropriately. Look,

I saw a stat that said each week a quarter of U.S. adults use a medicine that contains acetametophan.
So this is a widely used drug.

As you said, yeah, it was like the only thing women can take to bring down a fever or deal with pain relief when they are pregnant.

The problem is there are some studies with, you know, I said there was one study in Sweden that analyzed the health records of 2.5 million children.

Initially, it found a small positive association between women who used pseudaminophen and incidents of autism, ADHD, and other challenges, but that link went away when they did some subsequent analysis that incorporated genetics.

into the passing down of those traits. So there's a lot of data out there, and I think people are looking for reasons or an explanation for why there has been this rise in autism.

A lot of people say it's because we're better at diagnosing it now or we're diagnosing things now that we didn't used to.

But the challenge in this case is you can't do pharmaceutical research on pregnant women for obvious reasons because it would be completely unethical.

So it's really hard to pin down the exact causes of problems. And when Trump goes out there and just riffs and is like, did I get that right? Did I nail that stat?

It's like, buddy, you are giving guidance about

vaccine intakes, use of medicine for pregnant women that people are going to follow. Like half the country is going to treat as gospel, and you're just winging it based on how he feels.

He just admitted it. That's how I feel.
Well, that's how I feel. He also,

every once in a while, when he's reading something or saying something, and he kind of realizes there's a logical conclusion that he hasn't thought of before, and so he just says it out loud.

Like when he said that there should be some sort of punishment for women, he was just sort of following the train of thought. It's like, well, that seems to be where it would go.

He'd not realize he'd stepped into like a political morass. And here he's like, says here, Tylenol may lead to autism, but if women have a high fever, they should take it.

So I guess that means if they just can't tough it out anymore, I guess you have to take it. Like you saw him like figure it out in real time.
Like, wait a second, what is this advice exactly?

Then you look at what that's, what he's actually saying, which is that like, if you're up, if you're pregnant and you're, you're sick, you don't feel well, you have a terrible headache, you feel bad generally, you now have the president in your being like, do you care about your baby enough to not take this medicine or are you you going to tough it out based on

just like completely uncertain medical info? Just like evidence that would not be presented in this way by

from a fucking kook. This is not like, this is not like after careful study.
This is not like, this is from an environmental lawyer and dilettante. Yeah.
And you know why he's doing it?

Because we're going to hear in, I don't know, a month from now, maybe even less, he's going to be like, and then, you know, I stopped the Tylenol for the autism.

and now i saw i just saw the other day someone printed out something for me there's no more autism have you seen this because i fixed it i cured autism next year it'll be he cured autism and he'll be wondering why he didn't get the nobel prize for that well yeah also in last week you know the the advisory committee on immunization practices the akip they changed around the way children under four are going to get the mmrv vaccine and they're just like it's not worth getting into all the details but they're going to stretch it out over multiple shots they're going to make it more painful for the kids they're going to make it more time consuming they're going to make it harder for parents to get in to see a doctor and create more friction in the process.

That means more people just won't get their kids vaccinated. And this is like RFK and these

activists who don't have the right medical background, like figuring out ways to slowly push their anti-vax agenda that isn't fully just like banning the use of vaccines.

I was going to say, it's really, it's dipping their toes into it, right? Because what they're doing with MMRV is, you know, you have your MMR and the V is the chickenpox vaccine.

And so they're saying now under four, instead of combining them all, which they have for some time, now they're going to separate them again.

So you give them the MMR and then you give them the chickenpox vaccine later.

All that's going to, like, the people who are wealthier, who have health insurance, who can go to their doctors and just, and most of those doctors are going to be like, no, we're still going to give them to you all at once.

But for poorer families, from people who rely on like, like going to like a public health clinic, whatever, you're right. It's just going to be, it's going to be more inconvenient to get vaccines.

And so there's just gonna be fewer parents who remember to go back and get the chickenpox vaccine. And then there, he also talked about like shrinking down the dosage size and giving you more of them.

So you have like four of them, he said, maybe he was like kind of winging it again. The other part of this too is it's like just stepping back.

Like he said that in his remarks, something like, what's the downside? What's the downside? What's the downside? And it's like,

the doctors and experts who have like worked on vaccine policy and thought about this deeply are trying to protect kids on a vast scale as best as they can. And it's like, why is this the schedule?

It's not because they want to load up kids all at once, because they're what, like fucking sadists, because they don't want what's best for the kids.

No, they've looked at the data and they've looked at what happens when kids don't get vaccined.

They look at just the time if as you spread out those vaccines across a whole country, that's a whole bunch more people that aren't vaccinated.

And yes, it's unlikely in that whatever few months, right?

Like that for a whole, for one child that something goes wrong, but you look at a population on a whole, the end result is more sick kids, right? Like that's that's what this is about.

It's like the it's this sort of like conspiratorial mindset so infused into everything that they're doing.

Like the people that made these recommendations want what's best for the kids because they and and and that's all it ever was.

Well, it's core to the but the core of Bobby Kennedy's messaging is that the CDC and FDA and all these medical oversight organizations are just bought and sold by the pharmaceutical industry.

And that's that is what they're telling them is they're evil, basically. Yeah.
And the experts, the experts are bad because the experts are liberals and liberals are bad. And so you can't trust them.

And so we've got to do just something counter to what they've recommended. Yeah.
This is a file this one under damage that will play out over decades to our country.

You might not see an immediate challenge from these types of announcements, but measles already.

Measles early up. Well, we tried to give you some good.
Again, Jimmy Kimmel is going to be back on the internet. We'll get that.

We got that one. Just chalk that up.
One dose of that. And a great day at Agile HQ.

That buying that crypto paid off for those

honchos at Bayer.

Someone find out

what Trump administration officials started trading, started dumping their Tylenol stock before last.

The Astronom people putting 50 grand in a kava bag to fork on over to Dr. Oz.

When we get back from the break, you'll hear Lovitt's conversation with Senator Elizabeth Warren.

But before we let him get to the serious stuff, I hear there's a brand new lover leave it taping this Thursday, September 25th. Oh, yeah, we got Paul Scheer.

We got Hero of of the Resistance, Eric Swalwell. That's right.

And more. And more.
And more.

Love it. Are you aware that the housekeeping copy asked me to refer to you as the new king of late night?

By default. By default.
Also said, hey, you are already crying a little bit, so why not make those tears tears of laughter? I think there's like the pop, we're all crying because of politics.

I thought it was just a note to you.

Which gets very weird. It says it in italics.
Just read a fucking copy.

Anchor John. So check out Love or Leave It's upcoming shows and guests and grab tickets.
Head to cricket.com/slash events.

And if you can't come in person, there's a fresh pod for you every Saturday, no matter what the FCC has to say about it. Yay!

So subscribe to Love It or Leave It Now wherever you get

stuff. See, it's not my joke.
So subscribe to Love or Leave It Now wherever you get your podcast or watch on YouTube.

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Senator Warren, welcome back to Pond Save America. Good to see you.
Thank you. It is always good to be at the God.

Great to have you. We got a lot to get through.
We're in shutdown mode. It's looming.

Looming mode.

Senator Republicans rejected the Democratic proposal on Friday that would have reversed a bunch of health care cuts and extended Obamacare health insurance subsidies, which are set to lapse on January 1st, will cost people thousands of dollars.

They passed that through the big, beautiful bill. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer demanded to meet with President Trump.
Then President Trump said he's happy to meet.

Where are we at? What's next here? So let me back up just a tiny little bit about where we are for families all across this country.

Last spring, the Republicans passed that or into summer big, beautiful bill. It will take away health care from 15 million Americans,

Medicaid, and

also some ACA, Affordable Care Act subsidies. But it will affect the cost of health care for everybody in America.

And in fact, some of that is starting to click in right now because when hospitals have to deal with uncompensated care, and they do, they've got to raise their prices overall.

So health insurance companies know they're going going to be paying more for people who have insurance.

So, there are folks who are listening to this right now who are getting their letters from their health insurance companies saying things like, oh, you used to pay $700 a month, which I think is wow,

but now you're going to have to be paying $1,600, $2,100, $2,700. The numbers are coming through.
And these are huge increases for some people,

all because

Trump and the Republicans are trying to cut back on the spending, the federal spending on health care. So what's happened is, as you know, we're about to head into,

you got to pass a new budget by September 30th if the government runs out of money and will shut down.

So the Republicans can't do that without Democratic votes in the Senate.

They got to have us because they got to get to 60 and they've only got 53 if they have everybody on their side, which they might not. So they got to pick up seven or more on our side.

And what the Democrats have said is, look, we're happy to talk, but here's our ask. We want you to roll back some of those health care cuts.

We want you to roll back the part of the health care cuts where you're going to take away health care from brand new babies and their mamas, where you're going to push seniors out of nursing homes and out onto the street, where you're going to take away the wheelchair and the home health aid from our neighbor who needs some assistance to live independently.

We want you to roll some of this back. We're not asking you to spend more money than you were before.

We're not asking to advance some huge new health care policy, but by damn, roll back some of these cuts before people start dying.

And so far, Donald Trump and the Republicans have said, nope.

Right. Nope.
That's been it. Not, well, how about this? And could you do that? Nope.
Just saying, nope. And so Democrats are in the fight.
We're out there slugging it right now.

Okay. But so the Republicans are, but we've, we're on the other side of them saying no.
Right.

The House has gone. Republicans went home in an act of bluster.
Yep.

They control the House. They have the majority in the Senate.
They control the White House. They're saying, hey, you're doing what Republicans used to do.
You don't have the power.

You're trying to gum up the works. Let's plan a, we're going to pass a clean bill.
And if you want to take credit for a shutdown, you'll pay a political price for it.

So, what's the response to that? The response to that is: help a few million people get their health care back.

Don't raise prices for everybody who's got private insurance.

Don't take a bite out of Medicare, which this bill ultimately will because of other provisions and the fact that it's going to drive up the national debt. Just don't do that.

That

we're saying Democrats are willing to fight, and what we're willing to fight for right now is you got to do better on health care for people across this country.

So just play this out. Sure.

Democrats have now decided this is the fight we want to fight on.

This is our ask. It is clear.
It is concise. People can understand it.
Republicans say no. We enter in a shutdown.
They're forcing vote after vote after vote.

Are Democrats united around holding the line on this issue of health care? And is the idea that ultimately you believe the Republicans will blink and Trump will sign a bill that undoes these cuts?

So yes, the Democrats are together. We know what we're doing.

This is a righteous fight. I mean, this is the fight to have.
It's a fight that people can understand, and it's a fight that touches every single person in this country.

And can I just do a little side here? Do you remember what was happening exactly a year ago right now? I don't remember what was happening yesterday. Okay, well, that's fair.

But Donald Trump was standing up saying over and over and over that

people should vote for him because on day one he would lower costs for American families. Remember that? He used the phrase over and over on day one.
Those were his words.

Well now we're on day 240, 50, something like that.

And the price of groceries is up, the price of utilities is up, the price of housing is up, the price of back-to-school shoes is up and backpacks and baby strollers up, up, up, up, up.

Price of health care is up. And thanks to Trump and the Republicans and their one piece of legislation, it's about to go up a whole lot more.

This matters to American families. They are telling us that what they want is somebody on their side to help reduce costs.
Donald Trump not only has done nothing, he's seen the costs go up.

He and the Republicans have raised the cost. I think this is the to throw down and have that fight.

So there's people making the opposite argument, which just says, you're right about all that. He is failing to achieve what he promised.

He is in the toilet in his numbers on all of these issues, right? He has not been able to deliver.

Democrats are united on that score. Republicans look bad on that score.
And then we're going to go into a shutdown in which the politics are far murkier.

And on a pure practical, hard-nosed political calculation, that to some people seems like a stupid idea. So I gotta say, I'm not sure why anybody thinks it's murkier.
Now, look,

it's not for me about the politics. We are in.
Well, I hope it should be. Why not? Let me say it slightly differently.
It is about getting people the health care they need.

And that is a goal we not only can keep in mind, it is a goal we should keep in mind. I think the politics here are very straightforward.

We stand up and tell the American people every single day what what Donald Trump promised and what they are doing right now, and that all the Democrats are asking for is to roll that back so that millions of people don't lose health care.

I think that's a pretty strong place to fight from. And damn, if Democrats aren't willing to fight for that, then we've got a lot bigger problems.
So I want to come in for the other side.

And I want to stand this just because I do think it's a genuine, like, Democrats are in a very tough position. I just want to be clear about this.

And I don't think there's a lot of obviously, clearly, great paths. We are not in power.
That is a deep frustration. But the other side of the argument is

this is, I agree with everything you're saying about healthcare. Donald Trump is consolidating his power over the federal government.

We would be funding something that would be used to go after political enemies, to gut agencies without congressional approval, to allow him to continue doing corrupt deals that enrich him and his family personally.

That any impremature of Democratic support for funding this government is a kind of normal politics when we need to shut this thing down

by any congressional means that we have. And yes, healthcare is a uniting issue, but it's also, in some sense, one in a constellation of

really unprecedented assaults on the checks and balances of our society, of the Constitution.

Kimball's back today, terrific, but trying to abuse the FCC FCC to go after his political enemies. And that this is maybe politically the right fight, healthcare, but it's not the truest

danger in our society right now.

So I think of this as nothing succeeds like success.

You've got to get some wins.

You've got to show. that you can stand together, you can stand up when the going gets tough, that you can still all

push hard because

that's how we're going to have to take this fight on.

I think that, for example, today with Kimmel, yeah, you're right. Kimmel's back, and yay, that's wonderful.
So, what's going to be the takeaway? Did it fix everything? No.

Should we still be beside ourselves over a president who so openly has made it clear that he wants to control the media, the stories about him, and

destroy the First Amendment? And my view on that is: no, we should not relax over any part of this, but there's another part to the takeaway, and that is your voice actually matters.

Enough people stood up, enough people went into the streets, found it different ways, enough comics stood up, enough people hung out flags, enough people said, Whoa, wait a minute, what happened?

That's not right.

And yes, it's a small piece of a big,

big

problem,

but it's a toe hold

on reminding ourselves of our own power. And I think that's what's coming up at the end of the week on this question about health care.

We get more people energized, more people mobilized, and we push back. Two good things could come out of this.

One is a few million people could get health care coverage who otherwise wouldn't, and some rural hospitals wouldn't close. And some cancer research would be restarted.

Those would all be good things all by themselves, no matter whatever else happens. But the second is

we'd all say, oh, fighting pays off. And look, I'm willing to fight.

That's who I am. Yeah, yeah.

But we win when we've got a lot of us fighting, when we've got a lot of us committed, we've got a lot of people who've seen how dark and scary it can get in the middle of a fight and who still realize that it is worthwhile to stick together and stay in the fight.

So

I think we should do it. I think we will do it.
And I think the consequences of doing it, it doesn't win everything everywhere all at once,

but it gets us on a winning path. And damn, we need that.
And you feel like there's 43 of your colleagues that aren't going to squish? I do. I do.

All right. So in other news, TikTok, legally banned since January, but in a completely lawless way, it's still been chugging along.

We now have more details on the new deal via Axios that Trump may announce this week. The algorithm would be leased to a new company owned by billionaire Trump Allies.
So problem solved. Yo, totally.

Look,

this is the ultimate about the price we pay for corruption. And it's Donald Trump trying to seize media and every possible

vehicle. So yes, getting getting his buddy Ellison in there and they run it and it all, guess what? Every algorithm says Donald Trump is the guy, right?

But it's bigger than that. It's how this country has shifted so dramatically.
And I don't want to go from the country was perfect and now the country is terrible.

It's the country had a lot of problems and now, man, you thought those were problems. They have just magnified.
And it's the corruption element. You see it by

what does

what does it mean to build an oligarchy?

You know, Vladimir Putin puts his buddies in to run things that will make his buddies billionaires, but also means the buddies will use the power and energy of the things they run to support Vladimir Putin.

That's the deal. And Donald Trump, you know, big admirer of Vladimir Putin, wants to control, yes, he wants to control the media, but he wants to control everything, right?

He's cutting deals with NVIDIA and their chips, right? He wants a piece of the action. He wants to control, control, control

because

he wants to get something back from these guys. He wants money personally.
You want to do the crypto play here.

But he wants all of these billionaires, all of these tech CEOs, all of these CEOs, come in and bend the knee to Donald Trump, offer Donald Trump a, what do they used to call it in Roman times, a tribute?

Wants to get his beak white, let's say.

That's right, wants to dip his beak, isn't that the phrase? And give Donald Trump something,

and then, lo and behold, your giant purchase gets approved, your

merger gets approved, if you're a foreign country, your tariff gets approved, if you're just a giant international company, your tariff exception gets approved, right?

Your license, your broadcast license

remains viable. So, Donald Trump is trading the things that are valuable to our nation

off to a handful of individual corporate actors for the purpose of increasing Donald Trump's political power and

his

personal finances. Aaron Powell, so there's two sides to this.
One is Donald Trump, through a lot of bluster,

has convinced corporations to give him power he couldn't take. We've seen that with Disney.
We've seen that with others.

But the other side of it is that these corporations, universities,

media outlets, law firms, they're not afraid of repercussions from people that believe in democracy. There was no actual organized campaign to boycott Disney.

It seems to have happened naturally as people people took in the news, and maybe Disney was hopefully caught off guard by that.

But Columbia wasn't afraid of its alumni when it went into a deal with Trump.

Are we doing enough, those of us that believe in democracy, to lay out the ways in which we will hold companies and institutions accountable for capitulating to Donald Trump?

And are there things we should be talking about more? Yeah.

No, we're not doing enough. And yes, there are things we should be talking about a whole lot more.

And let me just tie it back that's why I see the Jimmy Kimmel as just a tiny little spot of light I don't want to oversell but it is some light and should remind a whole lot of people wait

our voices matter here and it's the same thing about this upcoming showdown over shutting down the government look this is the moment I say this to everybody in the country right now this is the moment if you can't think of somebody whose health care you're willing to fight for your own, your cousins, your neighbors,

if you can't do that, just think about Donald Trump's power overall and the Republicans' power overall.

How they could agree among themselves with no Democrats with them to take away health care from 15 million Americans, shut down these hospitals, drive up costs for everybody else. Why?

So they could hand out a trillion dollars in tax breaks to a handful of billionaires and billionaire corporations?

Get your blood boiling over this. We have a moment.
And sometimes you need those moments. You need those moments where people will speak up.
You know, in fact,

I want to give you a little piece of this. I get it.
It's not always that we, okay, the rally starts, you know, at 10 o'clock on Saturday. I love it.
I love the protests. I love the rallies.

But it's lots and lots of ways. You know where I've spent the last week has been with podcasters who are in the healthcare space.

They're not politicians, but man, they care about access to health care. They care about access to health care for little babies and they care about it for people in nursing homes.

This is a moment where we have a chance to unite. And yeah, we're using different modes than we used before.

This is the subject matter in front of us: healthcare, but it's about power, our power versus their power. We got a chance here.

But when you got a chance, you better take it.

So former Vice President Kamala Harris has a book coming out. She describes being deferential to the Bidens and whether he should seek a second term given the liability age had become as reckless.

You know, I know you've talked about this, but do you agree with how the vice president characterizes that moment? And do you believe that that would apply to other leaders as well?

Was the leadership of the Democratic Party reckless?

So look, I haven't read her book, so I shouldn't be speaking about, you know, a summary of the summary of what she said.

But I put it this way right now. I think that

public service

is an honor and a great responsibility.

And you get up every day and just try to do your best. And you try to do your best, not so you can get re-elected, but you try to do your best so you can actually make something happen that's good.

And that connects to this point

by way of saying

we,

as Democrats, we didn't,

obviously, we did badly in 2024.

For me, the way I see it, the little plot of land I stand on, is the way we did badly is that we let

the

billionaire wannabe tyrant wannabe

stand out there and be the guy who talked about the economics of American families in a way that they heard

we let him be the guy who said

I hear how it's not working for you and I'm going to fix that I'm going to make that a key part of my whole presidency. He had some other stuff, but this was, this was the thing.

After he gets elected, he says when he's first interviewed,

why do you think you won? And he said, because I talked every day about lowering costs on day one.

And so

when you put it,

you look backwards, you say, we really screwed up on that. So for me, the lesson I take away from that is I am not screwing up on that one again.

And if I can help it, I'm not letting Democrats screw up on that one again. We got to stay focused on this question of what's happening to millions of American families.

Why are they loading up on debt? Why are car repossessions on the rise? Why is it that their description of this economy is the lowest it's been in half a century?

And what are the things we can do about it? And by the way, that's why the healthcare fight is the right fight to have, but there is more that we need to do there.

Yeah, I mean, the reason I bring it up is not, I know everyone is sick of looking backwards,

nobody more than me, but I ask because I think I look at this moment, I say, all right, the Democratic brand is in the toilet.

People don't trust Democrats, they don't believe Democrats, and I think, well, how did we get here? And part of it was people couldn't feel the effects of economic policies where they had been passed.

And we were just, the bully pulpit was empty. Joe Biden was a terrible communicator.
And

even people that were defending his ability to do the job, I don't think were even honest with themselves enough about how much of a price we're paying for that lack of communication.

And then I look at a moment where there are Democratic leaders who aren't endorsing someone like Mom Donnie, who's inspired a lot of people.

And I look at this shutdown fight and I think, am I going to look back on this and say, I wasn't admitting to myself that I thought we didn't have the leaders in place who maybe they're great at organizing, maybe they're great at communicating on the Hill, maybe they're great internally.

But like, are these the galvanizing leaders who can go toe-to-toe with Donald Trump right now? You know, I guess I see this part of it slightly differently. You're here.

You've got a damn big microphone. Don't tell me about the leaders of the Democratic Party.
You know what the fight is. You can describe this fight in a whole sentence.
Okay, you're right.

So get in the fight.

No, but I'm serious about this.

You know, people say to me, who's the leader of the Democratic Party? And my answer to that is, we got 47 people in the United States Senate who are out there in this fight.

And you know what we need right now? 47 people in the United States Senate. That is the thing we need the most.
We need all 47 of them absolutely at full pedal to the metal on these fights.

And we need to get them into these fights. And right now, spending our time shooting at each other, I just don't think that is the place to go.

I think the place to go is get in this fight and give it everything you've got. TikTok, we are running out of time.

I hear that and I want to be there with you on that,

but I'm in an odd-numbered year still, and I feel like it's an odd-numbered year, so I get to have these kinds of conversations.

We're getting into the fall of next year. I want to get together, but I think sometimes, look, this was one of the arguments to say, stop talking about Joe Biden's age

in the run of shape. No, but I'm not saying you're doing that.
I'm just

part of this is, yes, everybody has to pull together. We have a job to do.
We shouldn't be turning

the microphones against each other, to continue the analogy.

But at the same time, I look at the Democratic Party, and it's, yes, it's about message, and yes, it's about a plan, but it's also about a base of people that authentically believe in the people that are speaking to them and for them.

And I know that I've watched you campaign. I know that people know what you stand for and have an authentic connection and that you've been fighting for it since you were a writer and professor.

I look at AOC, Bernie, Barack Obama, even Bill Clinton. It's not ideological.
And I say, all right, these are people who I understand their worldview.

And that gives me confidence when they tell me that they're going to do something hard or they're going to compromise, whatever it may be.

And I have to go pretty far down the list of leaders of the Democratic Party before I get to people that have that authentic connection to the people they want to lead.

And that does make me worried about a shutdown. And I do think it's worth having this fight now rather than looking back next year and saying, wow, we really didn't have people

at the microphones that were the right people to lead us.

I see it right now, this minute, as we know what the fight is in front of us. I don't need somebody to tell me this.

I don't need somebody to say, oh, well, I have this title within the Democratic Party, so I'm going to tell you what to get out there and talk about. I'm the one who decided to come here today.

And I hope that's happening with 46 other.

folks on my side in the Senate and 200 plus on the House side

because the substance of the fight matters right now. A win matters

right now. This is what we're into and we can't, there is no one voice anywhere who will win this fight by themselves.

It is instead

We are a party that is still tied to people and the the fight that we are having. If we had held Donald Trump, to tell the truth, a year ago, if we'd had just a little bit of

here's what we want to do and here's what we are doing for hardworking people, here's how much we understand about what's broken and here's what we're willing to do to fight for it.

A winning fight matters and

it has knock-on effects that I think matter here. And this is why I understand the very sophisticated people who say there's a lot broken and it's not just healthcare.
Can I tell you a quick story?

Of course. Okay.

When I was a little girl,

I was studying Franklin Delano Roosevelt. It's like some fifth grade thing where you got to copy out some words about him.
And I'm sitting on the floor back in Oklahoma where I'd grown up.

And I look up at my grandmother who's in her 90s and she had lived through the Great Depression and I just say to anyone who doesn't know the Great Depression in Oklahoma was the one-two punch of economic catastrophe in a dust bowl unlike the world had ever seen

and my mamma and papa

got wiped out in the Great Depression bank failed lost all the money that they had put away for their retirement basically had to start over

and so I'm sitting there while I'm working on this report, and I looked up and I said, Mama, do you know who

Franklin Roosevelt was?

And she smiles at me and she says, Of course.

And I said, What did he do?

And my mama, who had an eighth-grade education, read the newspaper every day, she looks up and she said,

Well,

he

made it safe to put money in banks

and

a lot of other good stuff.

I think of it this way. You fight very real fights that people can see that touch their lives.
And sure,

we all have the rest of the fights too. God bless.
There's a lot that was broken. There was a lot that was broken.

creation of the SEC, right? All the things that we did following the Great Depression that we saw was broken, that we needed.

But the key part is that you've got to reach as many people as you can across this country with the story of what you're fighting for,

and that we're all trying on our side to support that, to make sure people don't die, to make sure they don't lose their health care,

and that if we can make that clear and get enough pushback that

some number of people actually do get their health care restored or their cancer research restored and the Democrats get a win.

I think that's a step in the right direction for us.

So, speaking of healthcare, before we let you go,

right before we were recording this, there was a bizarre press conference with Donald Trump and RFK Jr., head of health and human services. Trump was speaking.

He was, this is a pretty dubious announcement about

the connection between acetaminophen and autism with a recommendation that

pregnant women no longer take Tylenol or acetaminophen. This follows the

RFK's panel voting against the combined MMR and chickenpox vaccine for kids under four.

What's your reaction to that? And

what happens when the president starts rambling?

He can't even pronounce acetaminophen, Minofin, by the way, about health care in such an evidence-free way? Aaron Powell,

I have a couple of responses. The first one is, it just feels like every day we turn on

the news, and it's the next episode in the Donald Trump show.

And he got stirred up about one thing, or a different thing, or another thing, and we're all off and running.

And today it's

this one

but that real people get hurt

and that's the scariest part about this when

RFK Jr.

had been nominated to be the head of health and human services

there were a lot of folks not just Democrats who said

whoa that guy's been trafficking in

anti-vaccine conspiracies

for a long time yick

on this stuff.

And it's not just yick,

that could be dangerous to have somebody in that place if he started using his tools to get rid of vaccines.

In fact, he'd been making money off suing vaccine companies and bringing in more plaintiffs and stirring people up to sue vaccine companies.

So

several of us asked him a lot of hard questions during the nomination process,

And he gave the, I want to describe it as the right-ish answers. They were directionally right.
Occasionally he'd say other things that you'd think, wait, what did he just say?

But over and over and over, he said, I will not take away vaccines from anybody.

And now he turns around eight months later. And

yeah, he, let's face it, he has taken them away.

The criteria under which you used to be able to get these vaccines has changed and certain vaccines will not be available or will not be available to certain groups or you'll have to pay lots of money for them.

You know, you'll have to do an off-label use, all of the above.

Lots of speed bumps in the way and in fact some absolutely can't do this.

So

I think of this

as

a moment where we measure one more time how many checks have been lost on this administration.

That it's no longer,

yeah, but if all of the vaccine experts and the doctors and scientific evidence and around the world, all the experts and people who study this all the time all say, oh, that makes no sense at all, that it just doesn't matter.

Because RFK is off spinning in his own

world.

And as long as it's an audience of one, as long as he can keep Donald Trump happy, that is all that matters. Do you think your colleague Bill Cassidy, like,

you know, he is a doctor. He

claimed to have gotten all these reassurances from RFK Jr. Have you talked to him about it? Like, you know, I can't tell.
It's hard to tell if he was willfully

like, was he snowed or did he allow himself to be snowed? I can't tell. Look, I don't know.
I wasn't in the room. I'm not in his head.

But I do know that

this business around the vaccines,

that good people who've worked in this field, including Dr. Senator Cassidy,

have expressed over and over

their deep concerns if Americans are not getting vaccines. So I just look at what he says is a problem

and then try to figure out not so much the backwards,

where did the wheels come off the bus,

but the forward.

So what are we going to do about that?

Where do we find the place

to be able to get these vaccines

back to a place, A, where they're available, but B, where more people get a truthful answer about the risks of having unvaccinated children.

And it does seem like with all things, it comes back to win the House. Yeah.
And could we also win the Senate? It'd be great to win the Senate too, but either way, build a bipartisan support for

vaccines, given that it remains

a deeply bipartisan issue. Last question.
Sure. What are you streaming? What are you watching? What are you consuming?

You know, the baller. I can't even bring up the ballers thing again.
It's been years now, but it still shocks the conscience. So, what do you like?

The pit. Oh, the pit.
And hacks. Have I seen the two best shows ever, ever, ever? I love them both.
The pit was fabulous. Have you watched Andor? You're not a Star Wars person.

You got to watch Andor, although it's on Disney Plus. Now that Kimmel's back, are we allowed to have it? No, I think you're still not.

You've got to punish them for a while. All right.
Well,

once they've come back,

once they've bent the knee to us, once the mouse has come and begged for our forgiveness,

I'm ready. You got to watch Andor.
Okay. I put it on my list.
All right. Senator Warren, thank you so much for joining us.
Good to see you. Thank you so much for having me here.

It's always good to see you. And thanks for staying in the fight.

Where else would we be, you know? Yep.

Well, as I always say, better to be in the fight than on the sidelines.

That's our show for today. Thanks to Elizabeth Warren for joining.
Dan and I will be back with a new show on Friday.

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